Peter MacNicol Gets Disqualified for Emmys After Getting Nom for Veep

In case anyone needed a reminder that the Academy is not an ethereal body composed of infallible demigods—that it is, indeed, simply a panel of human beings trying their best—Wednesday signed, sealed, and delivered it.

Peter MacNicol, who received an Emmy nomination earlier this month for his performance in Veep, has just been disqualified from his category, guest actor in a comedy series. Why? Because apparently, he’s actually not technically a guest star.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, guest actors must appear in “less than 50 percent” of the season for which they’re nominated. MacNicol appeared in Veep as Jonah’s uncle in five episodes out of 10 in Season 5—although his final appearance in the season’s penultimate episode is only a few seconds long.

The Academy, which will soon announce a new nominee in MacNicol’s place, told T.H.R. that while MacNicol qualified at the time his entry was submitted, he appeared in one more episode after that, which automatically disqualifies him. However, the Academy added, “This decision is in no way a diminishment of Mr. MacNicol’s stellar performance on this season of Veep.”

HBO told T.H.R. that the show was still in production when the due date came up for Emmy submissions—so credits for later episodes “did not yet exist.” To their knowledge, MacNicol was only supposed to appear in four episodes.

On the bright side, at least this wasn’t MacNicol’s first nomination: he’s been nominated three times before for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series, each time for his performance in Ally McBeal. And on his third bid in 2001, he won.

What’s most fascinating is that something like this has happened before—at least twice, in fact.

In 1995, Dennis Miller got barred from competing for Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program with Dennis Miller Live because of a rule that stated nominees in the category could not host a variety or music series with their name in the title. Ironically, the nomination went to Rosie O’Donnell for HBO Comedy Hour Rosie O’Donnell—which, as a one-off, apparently qualified.

And the second time? In 2000, Henry Winkler was disqualified because his submitted guest episode on Battery Park didn’t actually air during the appropriate window. Instead, William H. Macy got to compete as a guest star from Sports Night.

And those are only the ones the Academy didn’t catch. Just last week, Variety reported that Jason Sudeikis got ousted from the same category, for the same reason. He could have qualified as a supporting actor for Last Man on Earth instead, but it was too late for him to resubmit. As Variety noted, the category’s rules have fluctuated over the years—and were just changed last year, after Uzo Aduba took home a guest actor award in 2014 for Orange Is the New Black, despite appearing in almost every episode of the season.

A recommendation, from one fallible human to a few others: it might be time to pick a set of rules and stick to them. It’ll probably make life easier for everyone.